Santa Clara, California-based Sun’s StarOffice Suite includes five key applications: the Writer word processing tool; the Impress for presentation creation tool; Calc spreadsheet application; Base self-contained database; and Draw graphical tool.
The product is based on the OpenOffice.org open source code and runs on Linux and Sun’s Solaris operating systems, as well as Microsoft’s Windows, and the new version includes advanced import and export filters for compatibility with Microsoft Office applications.
With a download price of under $70, and a retail price of under $100 the product is competitively priced with Microsoft’s Office, and can now boast support for OpenDocument, which was adopted as a standard for office applications by the Oasis standards group in May.
Open Document Format for Office Applications v.10, to give it its full name, is based on the XML schema developed by the OpenOffice.org open source applications community and was recently chosen by the State of Massachusetts to become as the standard for all of its office documents by January 2007.
As well as OpenOffice.org, the OpenDocument Format will also being supported by IBM Corp’s Workplace offering, Corel Corp’s office applications, while the open source KDE Project has supported it since the release of KOffice 1.4 in July.
Nevertheless, Sun will be hoping that its commercial support for the format in StarOffice 8 will give it first-mover advantage, especially if Massachusetts’ plan produces a domino effect among other government agencies. Microsoft has said that it has no intention of supporting OpenDocument, which will see it effectively opting out of Massachusetts’ office applications refresh.
